With Manning aboard, Broncos can tie it up with Tebow, ship off miracle QB

Cam Cole, Vancouver Sun columnist03.19.2012

Quarterbacks Peyton Manning (left) of the Indianapolis Colts and Tim Tebow of the Denver Broncos exchange pleasantries after a September 2010 National Football League game in Denver. Now that Manning’s poised to join the Broncos as THE highly touted free agent, it’s only a matter of time before Tebow is sent packing.

There was always an element of snide dismissal of the whole Tim Tebow fairytale, anyway, an “I can’t wait for him to fall on his face” faction, because no rational explanation existed for the number of wins the Denver Broncos piled up with a quarterback who was so plainly mediocre (to put it politely) most of the time.

And football is not a game that lends itself to oddball abstractions like, you know, belief in something larger than the game plan.

So now, that’s over.

Hall of Fame-bound free agent Peyton Manning’s decision to take his aging and precarious but certainly prodigious talents to Colorado and cast his lot with the Broncos means the gloves can come off, and everyone who’s been saving up a favourite Tebow one-liner may now release it for the amusement of the masses.

The Tim Tebow phenomenon — the conspicuous, genuflecting man of God, praising his lord and saviour with each new miracle the quarterback produced — has grown too big and unwieldy to go back to being sidebar material, so it must go elsewhere.

If he stayed in Denver, Broncos VP of football operations John Elway would have to keep revisiting his 2011 observations on Tebowmania, statements best forgotten now that there’s no need to make it all sound plausible.

You can only find so many ways of saying, “He may not throw like a quarterback, but he wins” before people start concluding that you actually believe in him, and the Broncos’ belief in Tebow — their 8-8 record and out-of-nowhere playoff win over the Pittsburgh Steelers notwithstanding — was only for public relations purposes.

In case anyone needed a reminder that football is a business first, and the players who produce the excitement and the wins are as disposable as underwear, here is Exhibit Number ... well, however many players have come and gone since the NFL’s dawn of time.

Tebow is yesterday’s news now, as easily forgotten as that rush of blood to the basketball media’s head when Jeremy Lin was the darling of the New York Knicks, and Linsanity was this year’s Tebowmania.

It seems almost embarrassing now, to think of all the overwrought verbiage that accompanied Lin’s 15 minutes of fame, but in New York, as in Denver, saner heads eventually prevailed — or at least, each team placed its bets on bigger fish.

What’s fascinating, now that Manning has given his agent the go-ahead to approve the broad strokes of a five-year, $95-million deal with Denver, is how the ripples will spread.

The thinking is that the Broncos will try to trade Tebow to some team that already has a quality starter, where he can be a change-of-pace quarterback or even learn to be a tight end, which is what many scouts always thought he should have been, coming out of college. Assuming he can catch.

But also, in the wake of Manning’s much-hyped and feverishly covered tour of prospective employers — he was followed to his destination in one market by a TV helicopter, a la O.J. Simpson — what happens now in the places he chose not to sign?

One thing we know: Tennessee Titans owner Bud Adams was so disappointed not to land Manning, he didn’t even allow the Broncos to break their own happy news, and spilled the beans to the Nashville paper on Monday morning, saying Manning had called him personally to tell him he had chosen Denver.

All the frontrunners among the suitors had been quite willing to jettison their existing QBs at the prospect of landing the 14-year veteran of the Indianapolis Colts. Are there kisses and hugs all around now with Matt Hasselbeck and Jake Locker in Tennessee, Kevin Kolb in Arizona, and especially Alex Smith in San Francisco?

The 49ers always looked like the team most ready to win a Super Bowl given the smallest upgrade at quarterback, and Manning would have been a big one. They ought to have been there, instead of the Giants, in February. But now they’ve got to do it with the gifted but inconsistent Smith, who is reportedly unhappy at the team’s transparent pursuit of a better option, and might make the Niners pay for their faithlessness.

In Denver, meanwhile, the wheels have been turning for weeks, a separate plan for how to surround Manning with the necessary tools in the event that Elway and head coach John Fox were successful in their sales pitch.

The Broncos’ list of offensive weapons is not nearly as great as San Francisco’s. Will they now sign Colts centre Jeff Saturday, perhaps tight end Dallas Clark or running back Joseph Addai, pieces that would increase Manning’s comfort level?

At least one small obstacle has been removed.

Uniform No. 18 had been retired in Denver since being worn by the Broncos’ original quarterback in 1960, Frank Tripucka.

The 84-year-old former Saskatchewan and Ottawa QB from Notre Dame, who played and coached seven seasons in the CFL before and after his three-year stint in Denver, has told ESPN he’s okay with giving the number to Manning.

No word yet from The Man Upstairs on his feelings about the abrupt cancellation of Tebowmania, but an old boss of mine figures locusts in Denver are not out of the question.

And what of the fans who fell in love with the implausible, too-good-to-be-true Tebow tale a year ago, who erected billboards in praise of him, and of Him?

They’ve got Peyton now. Soon, they’ll be wondering what that 2011 frenzy was all about.

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With Manning aboard, Broncos can tie it up with Tebow, ship off miracle QB

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